Last week, we took a look at the Free Canadian Dividend Stock Screeners. Since half of my readership is from the States, I thought it would be unfair to let you down ;-). On top of that, I think there are more opportunities in the US dividend world than there are on the Canadian market. So here we go with my US stock screener reviews:

Zacks stocks is a complete investing website including free and paid services. As you can see with their stock screener, they offer basic info searches with additional “premium” features. The free stock screener offers pretty basic information such as dividend yield and P/E ratio. If you are willing to pay and go premium, you will get access to their investing research and rankings.

At first glance, I would say that you can find a better stock screener if you are looking for dividend stocks!

If you don’t know about FinViz Stock Screener, you are definitely missing something. In my opinion, this is probably the most complete and easy to use free stock screener. You can browse through the AMEX, NASDAQ and NYSE stock exchanges.

What I really like about FinViz is the incredible number of search options. They are also well divided in separate section (Descriptive, Fundamental and Technical). The fundamental section is pretty complete including 5 year growth data on EPS and sales.

Another very comprehensive stock screener comes from Google. The screener looks pretty slick and you can play with the min and max on the graphics (which shows the distribution of stocks across your min and max).

Like the FinVix stock screener, you can search through different categories of data (popular, price, valuation, dividend, financial ratios, operating metrics, stock metrics, margins and growth). Since you have several categories, you can easily select one or two metrics per category and generate a very complete search. Since there is a dividend section with a more info on them, dividend investors can certainly use it to search for US dividend stocks.

The last US stock screener to be covered is the one made by Yahoo. I know several US investors use it since it has been around for a while. This is also the reason why it needs to have a refresh on both the look and the content!

It is a pretty simple stock screener with basic information. Besides the dividend yield, you don’t get much info with regards to dividend metrics. I guess that the day they perform an upgrade, they will certainly add a little bit more meat to their screener!

What is the Best US Stock Screener?

I’m hesitating between Google & FinViz, what is your favorite US stock screener?

7 Comments

Craig Ogilvie

August 22, 2011, 4:23 pm

As a Canadian I am confused about the pros & cons of holding US stock within the RSP with respect to the difference in currency. How are the holdings effected with a gain or decline in either the Canadian or US dollar. I’m sure that this would affect the portfolio.

I personally like Google, as Google Finance is a go-to site of mine. I don’t screen very consistently, as I already have my pretty stable basket of ~50 stocks that are either in my portfolio or on my watch list. I just wait for opportune times to strike and do so when I have funds. Great list here! Thanks for the resources. I’ll have to try the others.

I’ve written about this on my blog, and I’m sure Mike has a few posts about this as well:

holding a U.S. company in your RRSP in CDN $$ (like I do), you are subject to currency risks.

U.S. company (like Abbott (ABT:US)) pays dividends in U.S. dollars ($0.48 per share) but then in your CDN RRSP, the brokerage converts that dividend payment from USD into CDN funds. For me, it would happen as follows with ABT, as an example:

Unfortunately currency risk is a real threat for U.S. stocks held in a CDN RRSP but over the long-haul, say 20+ years, things will work out in the wash.

As U.S. stock prices go up, so does the value of your portfolio. Nothing really different here, since the stock price for U.S. companies owned is typically reported in USD $ in your portfolio, not CDN $.

FinViz is by far the best for Dividend Searches. None of the others listed (for free) have the ability to search for many criteria important to dividend investors . . . I only wish that FinViz had a “Years of Continuous Increasing Dividends” screen. I can dream!